Lease assures Jaguars safe at home

Team tied to Jacksonville

The Jaguars could have a new coach, a new quarterback and a much different look next season.

What they won't have -- any time in the foreseeable future -- is a new address.

Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports consultant who assisted in moves by the NFL's St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders, said even if majority owner Wayne Weaver wanted, the Jaguars would be hard-pressed to play anywhere but Jacksonville before its Alltel Stadium lease expires in 2030.

Ganis recently reviewed the Jaguars' nearly 100-page lease with the city of Jacksonville at the request of the Times-Union.

"It's a pretty strong lease and one of the better leases in the NFL as far as protecting the community," Ganis said. "It has the right language to keep the Jaguars in Jacksonville for the full 30 years. And it's not a 'sweetheart' lease for the Jaguars by any means, because there are no financial guarantees to the team by the city like you find in some other places."

Weaver has never hinted at wanting to relocate his eight-year-old franchise in the NFL's second-smallest market, but fan speculation about a potential move has grown the past two years because of slumping attendance at 73,000-seat Alltel Stadium.

Hoping to blunt such talk last year, Weaver went against the tide of his fellow NFL owners by contributing $28 million, or nearly 85 percent, of $33 million in improvements to the stadium. Weaver also extended the team's lease for five years through 2030.

"That [lease extension] was a gesture to respond to what the media speculates and the fans always ask, which is whether we're going to move the team," Weaver said last spring. "So I told the city, 'Here, increase the lease for five years.'

"That's my way of saying the Jacksonville Jaguars are the Jacksonville Jaguars, and they're not going to be anything else."

Even so, pessimistic talk among fans and on Internet message boards persists. Ganis said such sentiment is natural for a young franchise in an immature pro sports market when the economy is soft and the team isn't winning. The Jaguars could finish 6-10 for a second consecutive year if they lose their season finale today at the Indianapolis Colts.

But in Ganis' opinion, any talk of a move by the Jaguars is unfounded because of a lease that favors the city in many respects and because of Weaver's recent extension to that contract.

"The fact that Weaver extended the lease five years shows where his head is at," Ganis said. "It looks as if he is dedicated to Jacksonville, because the greatest weapon for any owner in any sport is the portability of his franchise -- the threat that you can take it away. Extending the lease shows that he's not trying to get out of there."

The belief among fans that teams can summarily break leases and move at the whim of their owners gained strength in the mid-1990s, when the Cleveland Browns and three other NFL teams relocated within three years.

But that perception also is wrong, Ganis said, because the leases of the Rams, Raiders and Houston Oilers -- not to mention the Baltimore Colts 20 years ago -- all had expired at the time of their relocation. Browns owner Art Modell, meanwhile, still had three years left on his lease and was allowed to move his team to Baltimore only after the NFL agreed to give Cleveland a replacement franchise.

The NFL also recently amended its relocation policy to forbid teams from moving if they would have to break an existing stadium lease to do so.

"Moving an NFL team nowadays isn't an easy thing to do," Ganis said.

It would be especially difficult for Weaver to do so in Jacksonville for multiple reasons, Ganis said.

Above all, the Jaguars' lease has a "specific performance" clause that requires the team to play every home game at Alltel Stadium through 2030. Such clauses are uncommon in leases signed before the NFL's recent boom in new stadiums financed mostly with public money.

Ongoing speculation about the Colts moving to Los Angeles has intensified because the Colts have an escape clause in their lease for the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, but Ganis said the two primary escape clauses in the Jaguars' lease favor the city of Jacksonville and discourage any prospects of a move.

Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney, who negotiated the final language in the lease nine years ago as an aide to then-Mayor Ed Austin, said that preventing a move was by design -- and at the request of the Jaguars.

"They had me build into the contract that they didn't ever want to leave Jacksonville," Delaney said.

Leaving before 2030 would require the Jaguars to prove they had lost money in three consecutive seasons or to convince a local judge that the city was failing to properly maintain Alltel Stadium.

Considering how financially prosperous the NFL is and how evenly it shares its revenues, Ganis scoffed at the Jaguars ever being able to prove a net financial loss for more than one or two seasons.

That's because, under the NFL's current contract, every team receives almost $70 million from television revenues each year. The salary cap was $71.1 million this season, which means that clubs could almost meet their payroll with broadcast money alone. Additional income from ticket sales, luxury suites and sponsorships quickly becomes operating profit.

And even with an attendance slump that saw the Jaguars average a franchise-low 56,277 fans at home this season, Weaver's team still has a lucrative bottom line.

NFL documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times last year showed the Jaguars were one of the league's five most profitable teams from 1995-1999. Forbes magazine followed that last fall by estimating the Jaguars made a $27 million pre-tax profit on $137 million in revenue in 2001.

The magazine also estimated the Jaguars' current worth at $522 million, or more than twice the $208 million that Weaver and his group paid for the franchise.

In short, showing a financial loss for three consecutive seasons would be a huge -- if not impossible -- task for the Jaguars, Ganis said. Even the Arizona Cardinals, who have attracted four home crowds of fewer than 31,000 fans this season, won't lose money.

"It would have to be a totally disastrous situation, because NFL teams need only a modest amount of local support to break even," Ganis said. "You would have to work at losing money in the NFL. It's just not realistic."

And even if the Jaguars showed a financial loss for three consecutive seasons, getting out of their lease still would be costly for the team. The Jaguars still owe more than $60 million in rent that would have to be paid to the city in a lump sum in the event of a move.

The Jaguars also would have to immediately reimburse the city for millions of dollars in lost ticket surcharges, lost parking revenue and lost income from stadium naming rights.

"It would be hugely expensive for them to ever try to move," Delaney said.

Ganis also downplayed the possibility of the Jaguars ever being allowed to break their lease because of poor maintenance to Alltel Stadium. Doing so would first require the Jaguars to convince a local judge. Those same local judges are locally elected and have almost always sided with the city in previous disputes elsewhere.

"You really have to show the stadium isn't being kept up, almost to the point that the stadium is unsafe," Ganis said. "And even then, there would be a large amount of 'home cooking' against the team in the local courts."

Delaney never expects it to come to that as long as Weaver, 72, and his family own the team.

"Wayne and I argue about a lot of things, but you can never argue about his commitment to Jacksonville," Delaney said. "He wants to build something here, not take it away.

"So people need to believe me when I say this: That team isn't going anywhere."

Staff writer Bart Hubbuch can be reached at (904) 359-4148 or via e-mail at bhubbuchjacksonville.com.